Sanford grad's cicada eating party hits the press

Caleb M. Soptelean, The Sanford Herald, N.C.
·2 min read

May 9—How about some cicadas for lunch?

Former Sanford resident Joshua Wicker made a YouTube video about the aphids and someone jokingly suggested that he try eating some of the Brood XIX cicadas that emerge once every 13 years.

Wicker took the advice.

The 2003 Lee Christian High School graduate and Greenwood, S.C., resident said he decided to challenge others to do so and came up with four pairs of people ranging in age from 10 to 49 who decided to give them a try. The event took place on Monday, April 29 and aired on his YouTube channel on May 1.

Wicker came up with four recipes that he called a Southern tasting menu. These include cicadas inside Pillsbury dough, bacon-wrapped, inside a praline and Cajun fried.

The first three varieties were baked for various lengths of times ranging from 10 to 20 minutes and the latter was fried in peanut oil for 90 seconds.

For the pralines stuffed with cicadas, Wicker soaked the cicadas in an egg-and-water wash with some vanilla. He added a coating of salt, sugar and cinnamon.

"I adapted what I already knew. I love cooking things," he said, noting he's been a stay-at-home dad for his two kids for about 12 years. "People all over the world eat [cicadas]."

"Everybody who ate them had a blast," Wicker said of his event. "It's just kind of gone nuts."

The four pairs rated each cicada, ranging from one to 10. A few said some tasted like asparagus, although most said most of the creations didn't even taste like a bug. Some were taken aback by the crunch, although Wicker said he overcooked the original batch of Cajun fried cicadas.

Word about Wicker's adventure spread, and his local newspaper, The Index-Journal, wrote a story about it. Then The State newspaper of Columbia, S.C., picked it up and did another story.

On Tuesday morning, Wicker was scheduled to do a live recording for "Torture Tuesday," a radio program run by the Hawk and Tom Show on B93.7 in Greenville, S.C.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Fox TV affiliate from Greenville was coming to town to interview Wicker, according to his mother, Barbara Wicker, a Sanford resident.

Wicker is married to Nancy Hart Wicker, a physician for Hospice & Palliative Care of the Piedmont in Greenwood, S.C. She was one of the eight who participated in the cicada eating event.